Roses and Thorns and Graveyard Dirt
by MelissaeWrites
Summary: The Man in the Moon plays with life and death, but that doesn't mean he's always good at it. Jack is falling apart at the seams, and Aster is left to pick up the pieces. (Jack/Aster, Jackrabbit, dark fic with a semi-happy ending)


A/N: Hi! I generally post most of my short fics, experimental fics, request fics, etc. over at my tumblr instead of /AO3, but this one got long enough that I decided to put it here instead. This is still experimental, though, and I'll admit that it's a bit of a departure from my usual style. A post on necrobotany came across my tumblr dash three times in one night, and I tend to take that as a sign. And so...this happened, I guess.

(Note: Just as an aside for those that follow my work, I did recently post a fic to AO3 that does not comply with 's guidelines, so if you'd like to read that, you'll have to go to the AO3 pseud in my profile.)

* * *

The Man in the Moon had power beyond any spirit's wildest dreams, but it was austere. His power over life and death was somehow removed from them both; his life moved with clouded eyes and no warmth on its breath. His death was somehow even worse. With power so immense, he was not often bothered by the minutia of details. He powered through his private wars with brute force, and his decisions were carried out through sheer force of will rather than any art or magic.

Perhaps that was what went so very wrong with Jack Frost.

The Man in the Moon did not utilize his powers of revival thoughtlessly, but truthfully enough, without care. He saw miles and millennia into the future, and he saw what Jack Overland could be for him and for the world. And so he reached down into the ice, and he pulled.

The old rules quaked in front of his might, but were not silenced. Jack was master of his terrain for a few frozen months. But as spring set in, so too did the rot. Darkness set in as his eyes went milky and gray, and his pale skin more closely resembled ash than snow. His corner of the woods went quiet with fear, with anticipation, as a sort of dread permeated the land. Or maybe that was just the smell.

The Man in the Moon was without artistry, but not without connections. He wielded life like a mallet, striking and forceful, but one of his Guardians could paint with it, draw out each color with patience and tenacity.

"What have you done?" Hope whispered when called. " _What have you done?"_

The Man in the Moon was quiet, though even he did not know if it was through egotism or shame. He left Jack in Aster's care.

* * *

Aster watched, and he listened. He watched Jack's eyes. He watched the clouds filter away to reveal ice blue eyes streaked through with the green of fresh shoots of grass. The ice he assumed was courtesy of the Moon, and he knew very well where the green had come from. He wondered what color they'd been when Jack had been alive.

Jack was bursting with life now, but perhaps not his own. Beneath pale skin, thin vines laced together to provide movement. Leaves, mosses, flowers shaped his insides. They worked now, more or less. Color had returned to Jack's cheeks, vibrancy to his voice.

Aster listened. He chattered nonstop, like he'd saved some sort of bird instead of a human, barely more than a child. A child! Aster felt sick with it. He talked about some fairies he'd met in a glen recently, about the fact that he could wiggle his little toe now. He laughed at his own jokes, his voice deep and inviting and warm in a way that no frost spirit's had any right to be.

Aster heard that. He also heard the sibilant sigh of new life meshing with old life deep inside him. It was like silk against silk, the quiet voices of the greenery keeping Jack together, and Aster could not shut it out of his mind.

Jack laughed as he formed snowballs from the air, even as the ice browned his fingers and cracked his nails. Under Aster's watchful gaze, he'd stick his fingers carelessly in his mouth, give Aster a wink when they emerged flaw free. Aster's plants were self-repairing, even if Jack never paid their anguished cries any mind.

He listened and he watched, unable to tear his eyes away from what the two of them had wrought. That was his role in this sick pantomime now. He had not been paying attention when the Man in the Moon had set his moonlit fingers dabbling into the waters of life, and this was his penance.

Jack clung to him as he clung to life, flitting about his warren and playing with the googs. He doused his tail with glitter when he was not looking, and lay there lazily by his side as he worked. In quiet times, he would talk to him, telling him about how terrible the emptinesses in his memory were, about his questions about the world and his place in it. When Aster was weak, he would talk back.

He filled Aster's heart, bit by bit, with an icy horror and with something warmer, something Aster was too ashamed to put name to. He ignored it. That sort of thing wasn't anything he had a right to anymore.

* * *

Aster was Hope, or so Jack had been told. And though he didn't believe in much anymore, he did believe in that. After his eyes had clouded and gone dark, after his bones had started to creak and splinter, after his stomach had finished consuming the soup that was inside him and had started on itself, Aster had been there. Aster had saved him.

Aster hated him.

He tried to hide it, true. Aster tried to hide a lot of things, but Jack could see right through him. How could he not, with Aster's plants, Aster's _life_ rustling restlessly inside him? They called out to their master, begging to recognized, and it resonated with Jack's heart. (He was pretty sure he still had one, though he wasn't about to open up his chest and check.)

But Aster cringed away from his touch, and as he looked away, Jack could see revulsion hiding deep inside his eyes. That hurt, truly hurt, on a visceral sort of level that Jack imagined ran all the way down to his moss-lined soul. But he couldn't really blame him. Jack was all too aware of what he was.

So he covered that up, coated the bitterness with laughter and the pain with boyish grins, wouldn't allow Aster to see how his rejection was tearing him to bits. It was lonely when the only person who had the stomach to look at you saw only a monster.

Jack stared at his own reflection sometimes, in ice or in rippling rivers, and he wondered what Aster saw when he looked at him with those faraway eyes. He looked fairly normal, as far as spirits went, if you could ignore the flora and fauna mingled into one. Turquoise eyes, white hair, the occasional cluster of vein-like roots. He looked at his hands, his skin, and wondered how it was so immediately obvious to everyone around him what lurked beneath it.

Word traveled fast in the spirit world, he supposed. Not that he'd know, he'd never exactly been part of the grapevine—not metaphorically, anyway. And wow, he'd have to tell that one to Aster later. Maybe the old sourpuss might actually laugh for once.

Maybe his eyes would warm and he'd look at him, really look at him for once. Maybe he would see _Jack_ instead of the collective that writhed inside him. Maybe he would even pull him close and—well, hope was well and good, but that was just lunacy.

* * *

"Um, Aster? I think I'm flowering again."

In front of him, Aster paused in his work and frowned, sitting back on his haunches. "C'mere, then. Let me see," he commanded, holding out his paws.

Obedient for once in his life, Jack placed his hands in Aster's paws and let him turn them over and over again, silently taking in the tiny white blooms peeking out from beneath Jack's nails. He stared at them with something between fascination and nausea, and it was all Jack could do not to pull back, shove them in the pockets of his ratty hoodie and fly away.

There was something warring in Aster's eyes. It was clear in the tense lines of him, the tiny crease denting his forehead. When it finally came, however, Jack was still unprepared.

"I'm sorry," he said, voice hoarse and hushed.

Jack finally gave into his urge and curled his fingers back into loose fists, hiding the flowers and his trembling in one tiny movement. "What for?" he asked. He looked down at their joined hands rather than at Aster's face. He wasn't sure what he'd see.

To his shock, Aster ran his thumb gently over his knuckles, lingering over his flesh in a way that Jack had only ever dreamed about. "For this. For everything. For bollocksing things up this badly."

Jack didn't move. He barely even dared to breathe for fear that he would make Aster let go. "You didn't—you didn't do any of this, though..."

"Didn't I?" And the heat of it made Jack look up, let him see the way Aster's eyes flashed. "I should have stopped him from doing this to you. From bringing you back like this."

Jack knew he had a heart then, because he could feel vines and thorns constrict around it. "You—you wish he'd never brought me back?" he asked, and his voice shook.

"It's bloody unnatural!" Aster snapped, and Jack recoiled at the vehemence. "He was playing with things that don't concern him, and you're the only one that got hurt!"

"Says who?" Jack retorted, something acidic and dangerous boiling in his stomach. "You're the one who looks like he's going to throw up all the time."

Aster's eyes widened and he pulled back. His paws didn't seem to get the memo, though, instead tightening around Jack's fists. "I—"

"You can't even look at me," Jack said, what started as a yell dwindling into something quiet, resigned.

"I _made_ you," Aster whispered. "I keep making you and remaking you all the time. I know exactly what you are, inside and out."

Jack could no longer see his hands beneath Aster's paws, but he could see his wrists, the sharp jut of wood and bone framing skin layered on top of greenery. "Horrible," he murmured. "I'm horrible."

"No." Jack stared at him, and he could see his own surprise reflected in Aster's eyes. "You're not horrible," Aster said, he he looked as stunned by the admission as Jack was. "You're amazing."

He opened his paws to splay Jack's fingers out between them. "You're life within life. You're teeming with it," he said, running his thumb down one pale finger. "But it's not right, playing with your life like this. Making some experiment out of you. And I'm just—"

Jack watched him, unable to speak through the lump in his throat. He tried to think of what it could be. Moss, perhaps? Leaves? It was emotion, he realized, and marveled at the sheer humanness of the thought.

When Aster finally spoke again, the words sounded as if they were torn from him, like they left him bleeding through broken glass. "Am I just prolonging this? Is it because I can't let go of you?"

Jack pushed through whatever it was. The moss, the leaves, the emotion. "I don't want you to," he said, words leaving him in a gasp.

Aster flinched. "No. You're my responsibility. You're supposed to be..." he trailed off hopelessly. "I'm not allowed to feel this way."

"What way?" Jack asked, leaning forward.

Aster stared at him, and for once it was he was staring through him. Through the vines and tendrils that made up his body, through the smiles and laughs that he masked them with, maybe even beyond that, even further than Jack could see. "Like... if you're a monster, you're a beautiful one."

Jack took a step forward, than another. He watched Aster's face cautiously, to see if the revulsion returned. But even as he stepped into his space, even as he carefully, carefully reached out to touch, Aster's face didn't move. It was empty now, devoid of happiness or repulsion. There was something like resignation there, something lost. It was tattered around the edges, and Jack wanted to feel that, soothe away the jaggedness and leave something hopeful in its wake.

When he finally laid his hands on Aster's face, it was tentative, his fingers lightly tracing around the ridges of his eyes, his cheeks, the bridge of his nose and the creases he found there. The fur and heat was like a revelation, and Aster closed his eyes as if similarly overwhelmed.

But no, Jack realized, that was not what it was. "Come here, Jack," Aster murmured, and Jack finally placed it as hollowness. It was the same hollowness that Jack had felt for years, the same hollowness that he'd tried and failed to fill up with Aster and his Hope.

Aster was done. Absolutely finished. And so was Jack.

He leaned up against him, folding arms that whispered with movement around Aster's waist. He clutched at the fur and pressed his face against Aster's neck. He breathed in and out, and wondered if for the very first time, his lungs were actually filled with Life.

The tears came then. They were sticky, like a dewy sap running from the heart of a tree, and when Aster realized why his shoulders were shaking, what those soft sounds were coming from his small body, he made a rough sound. He bent his head and, after a moment (the last moment) of hesitation, he kissed them away, tongue rough on his cheeks.

"I'm sorry," Jack gasped out, though for what, he wasn't sure. For existing? For hurting Aster? For hollowing him out and throwing his Hope to the wind?

"I'm sorry," Aster repeated. Jack wasn't sure why he was apologizing, either. But his arms came up and around Jack and he realized that he no longer cared. There was something monstrous about this, he was sure. The other spirits would keep staring at him with disgust, and now it would be transferred to Aster as well. It was unnatural, as Aster had said, to have plants wending through his veins and his heart, to have them call out to their maker. To have him answer back in kind.

But Jack didn't care about unnatural now. He couldn't. Not when Aster was curling around him, head bowed and heavy. All he could do was cling back and live and live and live.

* * *

A/N: Thank you for reading... I hope you enjoyed.


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